People

Stars for Diana

The commemorative album for the late Diana, Princess of Wales, earned more than 64 million worldwide in just four weeks, Virgin, the company which recorded the album, said on Thursday. More than 16 million was spent by Britons alone who bought more than one million copies of the best-selling album which features artists as diverse as the Spice Girls, Luciano Pavarotti and Paul McCartney. All the money from the sale of the album goes towards a charitable foundation set up in memory of Diana who died in a car accident in Paris last August.

To date, the foundation has accumulated 56 million, of which 32 million came directly from Elton John8217;s sales of the re-written hit Candle in the Wind played at Diana8217;s September funeral in London. In all, 35 artists contributed to the Diana album. They also included Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Barbara Steisand, Eric Clapton, Aretha Franklin and Placido Domingo.

Tribute to Noel Coward

Elton john, Marianne Faithful and the Pet Shop Boys will headline a star-studded gala concert next week celebrating the centenary of the birth of writer, actor, composer and dramatist Noel Coward. They8217;re a little early 8212; Coward was born in December 1899 8212; but a whole host of names have already signed up for the January 15 date. Others include Suede, the Divine Comedy and Robbie Williams, formerly of take that. Profits go to an AIDS organisation, with their combined efforts going onto an album to be produced by neil tennant of the Pet Shop Boys. Marianne Faithfull will sing Coward8217;s quot;mad about the boy,quot; The Times said, after a dispute as to whether it was an ode to homosexual love and should be sung by a male artist. Among Coward8217;s plays are Private Lives, among his songs are quot;Mad Dogs And Englishmenquot;, and among his films are Brief Encounter. He died in 1973.

Hitler8217;s architect

An Austrian actor is planning to put on a play in Berlin about Albert Speer, Hitler8217;s favourite architect. The site chosen for the production is the former Academy of Arts near the Brandenburg Gate, the very building which Hitler ordered to be requisitioned for Speer in 1937.

The play Speer written by Esther Vilar, an Argentinian of German origin, will be produced by Austrian actor Klaus Maria Brandauer and will run from January 30 until February 8.

The play will be performed in the same hall where Speer used to exhibit scale models of his gigantic projects aimed at transforming Berlin into Germania, a city dedicated to the glorification of Hitler.

Scholar publishes new Kennedy theoryConspiracy theorists will be unusually twitchy this week following a startling new explanation of the Kennedy assassination by a respected scholar of the homicide. The American novelist Don De Lillo has published his latest epically suspicious account of America8217;s hidden patterns, Underworld. De Lillo is the patron saint of literary paranoia. Libra, his novel about the killing of JFK, is the favourite book of all those obsessed with who or what was in the Texas Book Depository on November 22, 1963. They believe that Libra, published as fiction, contains more truth than the US government8217;s official Warren Report, published as fact.

However, in an interview at the weekend, De Lillo stated: quot;What I believe is that Oswald firedthree shots from that window, which most critics of the Warren Report are not at all prepared to concede. They think he was a dupe. I don8217;t think he was.quot; This is the second shot fired at 22/11/63-obsessives recently from an unexpected direction. That other poet of paranoia and the mysteries of the Sixties, Norman Mailer, concluded a huge book about Lee Harvey Oswald three years ago with the view that Oswald not only fired the shots but probably acted alone.

Now De Lillo, too, essentially endorses the official version. It8217;s rather as if Oliver Stone scolded an interviewer: quot;Look, governments make honest mistakes. Don8217;t always be looking for plots.quot; Or the former Bishop of Durham answered a journalist: quot;What do I believe? Well, he was born to a virgin, died, rose three days later and ascended into Heaven.quot; The only consolation for conspiracy theorists is that they will be able to speculate on the Internet about whether someone has got at De Lillo. The previously admired but low-selling writer was paid 1.3 million by Scribners for Underworld. How long before De Lillo starts getting letters from aggrieved former fans suggesting that the military-industrial complex funded this sudden jump in his advances?

8212; The Guardian News Service